Following his unconventional victory, Yaan planned to seclude himself within the temporal chamber for a good period of time…sort of. He was still going to be fighting, but these challenges would be spaced a few days apart, now that he was entering the chamber for an extended period.

Yaan realised that his mind was in a strange state, whilst his emotions were unusually intense as he found himself unable to stop recalling the past. He most likely needed to spend some time meditating until this state remedied itself. It was unknown whether this was a side effect of the medicines he used, or if he had unknowingly stepped into a sort of illusion-based enlightenment. Regardless, this sort of mental state was not conducive to surviving life and death battles.

Unfortunately, Yaan had some errands to run outside of the tower before re-entering the tower to commence with a proper training session. The problem was that this would take him close to 6-8 hours…meaning he could miss up to 12 days of time within the chamber!

Instead, he decided to enlist Zue Yin to run his errands, forcefully suppressing his lingering solemn mood so that he could deal with her quickly.

At first she refused, not even accepting a generous offering of astral crystals as payment. Finally, Yaan relented with a sigh.

“This, this is…a phoenix bracelet!” She cried out, dropping her proud demeanour and greedily almost drooling over the treasure that Yaan held out in his palm.

“This bracelet simply has a phoenix hair foundation, there’s a single strand of hair from a phoenix feather within the centre of the bracelet. As for the shell material, it needs to be strong enough to protect it, so it’s inferno gold…”

Yaan was somewhat reluctant to give her this expensive thing, but he really didn’t want to waste all the astral crystals he’d spent on renting the temporal acceleration chamber. He would be training alone for some time now, so he needed to purchase more suitable cultivation resources for himself, whilst he also needed to sell many of the things gained from his various recently defeated opponents. The best solution was to pay Zue Yin to act as his errand girl.

“Wait…pure inferno gold?” Zue Yin turned to him, now completely shocked.

“Yes. Complete this list of chores for me, and acquire me this list of things from your own funds, then I’ll give it to you.”

“What, that’s-”

“Still an amazing deal for you. I’m only doing this because I want to stop wasting my time in the temporal chamber. It costs three 2-Star astral crystals every hour…”

“Seriously? Damn!” Zue Yin’s eyes widened and she quickly nodded, scurrying off to carry out Yaan’s various jobs.

Since this bracelet was stupidly valuable, he wouldn’t give it away for the chores alone. So, Yaan made Zue Yin pay for all of her own travel expenses, as well as the purchasing of every consumable resource that he needed. There were a couple of other seriously valuable things that he couldn’t make her buy with her own funds, since they were almost as valuable as the bracelet itself, but even so, it was a good deal for both of them.

Finally, Yaan was able to return to the temporal acceleration chamber to continue training.

Whilst he did intend to remedy his unusual state of mind before his next battle, right now, he actually had no desire to leave this unknown state, but instead wished to continue delving deeper into the blood essence illusions…

Yaan slowly sat down, once again opening the dark green case. He had already consumed all 50 of the pills in the case’s lower drawer, and 2 more pills out of 12 from the second drawer. There were 5 layers in all, with 7 pills on the third, 3 pills in the fourth, and just a single pill in the fifth drawer. Even without opening that top fifth draw, Yaan could already feel the powerful aura of a high ranking, well refined pill…for now, he ignored this temptation and continued his endeavour into these blood essence pills, which by a stroke of luck seemed to allow him to delve into countless illusions of many different living beings.

Of course, he was still devouring the pills whilst doing this, gradually refining his blood, allowing him to slowly develop more blood essence. During this process, the remainder of the pill was ‘wasted’ and absorbed into his body in the form of vital energy.

For a seemingly simple case of pills, this was practically a treasure trove in Yaan’s eyes.

He didn’t immediately consume a pill, but read each description of the remaining ten pills in the second draw. After some thought, he decided to be patient, and ended up reading through a small manual. It was a text which described blood essence as a resource in general, including blood essence refinery into superior body tempering pills, with a strong focus on the specific pills contained within this very chest.

The book was finished in a couple of hours, leaving Yaan even more excited to continue on. He now knew that his previous conjectures were indeed spot on; by consuming the untainted, undamaged blood essence of any living being, it was faintly possible to catch a brief glimpse of their memories, or even their personality or will. Generally speaking, this glimpse was the final and most intense death throes of their life, a 2-3 second period that a cultivator might obtain one time out of one hundred if they were lucky.

Yaan again realised that he was very usual in this regard. Was it all because of his understanding of illusions? Or was his ability to perceive the imagery within blood essence a different strange ability of his entirely?

With no way of knowing the answers to these questions right now, Yaan swallowed the next pill. Learning from last time, he decided to consume all of the Rank 3 versions before daring to touch those Rank 4 pills. Whilst they were not fatal to Yaan, they were…intense. He wanted to become accustomed to the experience, but also to build up his perception. Perhaps then, he could reap greater benefits from the Rank 4 pills!

As Yaan expected, the third pill he consumed from the 2nd draw, contained the refined blood essence of a human. This person was basically a mortal, but he was the great warrior of his tribe, revered for having great superhuman powers. In truth, he had just stumbled upon the path of Qi refining, stepping onto the 1st step without really understanding how he did so!

His life was grand and royal. He ruled for tens of years, a truly prestigious reign, a king well loved by his people.

As he got on in age, the battlefield was no longer an appropriate place for the king to step foot on. He often lamented the continual deterioration of his health and his strength, reminiscing about the past whenever he saw the new, powerful generals of the kingdom.

The king was happy with his life, he had bore multiple sons and daughters. His people had food, they were not at great risk from neighbouring nations and their warring ways…with satisfaction in his heart, he intended to enjoy his retirement, drinking fine wine whilst playing with his young grand children.

Yaan felt as if this illusion lasted for close to a life time…he almost forgot about himself, becoming engrossed in the old king’s life. He felt regret when the old man regretted, he felt happiness when his grandchildren grew up strong and healthy. In fact, watching his descendants go from newborns to competent adults gave him an even greater joy than that which he had gained in his younger years on the battlefield.

Yet at the back of his mind, Yaan knew that this story could not possibly have a happy ending. This man’s blood essence had been stolen and refined into a pill, so his fate was to…

To be stabbed in the back by the son he loved the most, doted on most heavily, nurtured with the utmost care, and loved more than life itself.

“All reigns are supposed to come to an end father, that is the nature of empires and war. A mortal king should not continue sitting on his thrown past 140 years of age…he should leave at least some time behind for his descendants!”

The king staggered backwards, but did not bother to pull out the dagger. Perhaps with treatment he may have lived, but…

Right now, not just his most favourite son, but each of his children, his brothers and his four wives, starred at him with resolute gazes. His eyes were wide, and he was unable to even let out a single sound. As tear dripped down from his face, and he finally fell back, dead.

The blade happened to pierce the core of his heart, drawing out the old man’s single drop of blood essence and fusing it into the blade. As for how this ended up as a pill in this place, Yaan had no way of knowing for sure.

Yaan kept his eyes shut for a long period of time. For a period, he didn’t want to open his eyes, he didn’t want to see the true world that he belonged to. He felt as if the illusion had been his life, and this reality was just a cruel trick.

“No…” Yaan’s eyes slowly opened, his gaze cold and ruthless. “Even such a joyous illusion still ended in sorrow and despair, in pain, suffering and meaningless death. Whether it is an illusion or reality, the core principals of the cruel nature of this world still pervade throughout…perhaps, even mortals cannot escape from the pain of pursuing something greater…”

Yaan muttered to himself before falling silent for a few minutes.

Unknowingly, his altered mental and emotional state returned to normal, not a trace of his previous solemn aura remained. It was unexpected that he would break out of this trance without even meaning to after experiencing just a single illusion, but reflecting upon the life of that old king caused Yaan’s lonely feeling to be replaced by a cold ruthlessness. This cold feeling enveloped his heart, giving him the urge to continue training and to develop his strength quickly.

After snapping out of his daze, Yaan was vaguely aware of the vital energy building up within his body. He instinctively went to suppress it back down into his body, but to his surprise, 6 of his astral tattoos suddenly reappeared!

After he defeated the 18 astral spirits and managed to retain control over his own body and mind, the astral spirits had disappeared without a trace. Honestly, Yaan even wondered if they had somehow escaped whilst he was preoccupied!

He stared down at his arms and saw the deep black tattoos emanating the black aura called ‘astral power’. Yaan suddenly felt the presence of these tattoos, but also of the others!

WHOOSH!

Instantly, under a single command that he issued with one strand of thought, all 18 astral tattoos materialised upon his body. It appeared that some had been hidden on his skin the entire time, only now made visible due to Yaan’s order. Others were clearly rising up from deep within his body, escaping from his organs and bones, until they too formed near identical tattoos across his entire body!

Yaan slightly gawked at himself, eventually pulling out a mirror and examining himself all over. With a few minutes of experimentation, he mastered the control over these tattoos, gaining the ability to materialise and hide away the marks filled with astral power at will!

“Astral spirits…astral power…a very sketchy ‘path’, if it can even be called that. But for now, power is power, and these spirits are the best way to rapidly accumulate strength!”

Yaan urged the astral tattoos to pour their astral power inwards, into his body. The power was dense and dry, enough such that it would drive weaker cultivators completely insane!

Yaan kept a calm expression, curiously observing how this dark power could be used to manipulate, seal and withhold his vital energy. His eyes instantly burst open and his jaw dropped, unable to believe just how simple and effective this method actually turned out to be!

Usually, when Yaan controlled his vital energy, he needed to focus, placing his utmost attention into creating the smallest of movements. Perhaps a brief halting or a slight reversal of the flow, or a single surge of his vital energy towards its target, was about all that he could muster. It was said that after forming the Vital Core, it became hundreds of times easier to manipulate one’s vital energy, to the extent that the body could be covered with vital energy, allowing the body temperer to soar through the skies!

For now, Yaan was nowhere near such a far off dream. But this astral power…

By only casually manipulating his astral power, he obtained relatively fine control to a high degree of precision. More incredibly, this astral power could gather and surge out like a tsunami, suppressing any and all energies within the body!

Yaan had no need to seal his own vital energy, why would anyone want that? What excited him, was the fact that this astral power could actually be used to control the usage of medicinal pills to an extent that Yaan had never previously imagined possible!

He would be able to consume any pill, then control the rate of its effect, or even seal the effect entirely! He could direct the medicinal energy in whatever direction he pleased, via whatever route he so desired, towards any destination of his choice!

One of the biggest annoyances he had always encountered in body tempering, was that many body tempering pills were basically impossible to use with a reasonable degree of efficiency.

In fact, half of these pills were just used for an entirely different purpose than they were originally intended! Since obtaining the principal effect was impossible, people just wasted the pills, digesting them as rapidly as possible, then inefficiently refining the medicinal effect into vital energy before all the pill’s power escaped!

As Yaan stared at his palms, which were flashing on and off with black life, he looked around and licked his lips. He no longer had the heart to sit around and read, nor to ponder illusions or dao…

He wanted to experience just how this astral power could be used to help further his cultivation!